1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to methods of ensuring the privacy and authenticity of documents. In particular, the present invention is directed to a system for preparing and reading medical prescriptions to/from electronic media in a secure fashion.
2. Description of the Related Art
As medical science as progressed, an ever larger number of conditions are either treated or prevented by prescription medications. Physicians prescribe and pharmacists fill more prescriptions for more different types of medications than ever before. This increase in the number and types of prescriptions being filled can easily result in a corresponding increase in the incidence of prescribing and dispensing errors, as well as an increase in undetected prescription forgeries and abuse.
Traditionally, prescriptions have been (and for the most part continue to be) handwritten and signed documents written on prescription pads pre-printed with the prescriber's name and contact information, much as a letterhead. This scheme, while long being a convenient system for prescribing physicians, suffers from a number of weaknesses that are troublesome or at best inconvenient for pharmacists, patients, and physicians.
While in the past, professional printing of prescription pads may have been largely sufficient to identify a prescription as coming from an official source, low-cost laser printing has made it possible for virtually anyone to produce professional-appearing stationery and convincing facsimiles of physicians' existing prescription pads with home-based equipment. To combat this potential for forgeries, particularly with respect to prescriptions for controlled substances, many professionally-printed prescription pads now employ such many of the same anti-forgery technologies used by financial institutions and reserve banks to prevent forgeries of negotiable instruments and currency, such as microprinting, thermally sensitive paper, non-photocopiable printing, and the like.
Another serious problem with handwritten prescriptions is legibility. Physicians, as a group, have long been notorious for writing illegible prescriptions. To address this problem, entire seminars devoted to handwriting improvement are held each year for members of the healthcare community. Another approach to this problem that is increasing in popularity, however, is to use computer software to not only print the prescriber's information (as with a pre-printed prescription pad), but also the actual medication and dosage being prescribed. An additional benefit of this approach is that the computer, with no additional effort on the part of the physician, can keep a record of all prescriptions written. Yet another benefit of using computers to print prescriptions is that computers can be programmed to store and utilize prescribing information about the medications being prescribed. Such information can be used to identify potential prescriber errors or other problems (such as improper dosages, potential adverse drug interactions or allergies) at the time the prescription is written, thus reducing the likelihood that a prescription error will go undetected.
A logical next step in the computerization of medical prescriptions is to automate not only the writing of prescriptions by doctors, but to automate the actual filling of the prescriptions. Test programs are underway by insurance companies to place medication dispensing machines into doctors' offices for use by physicians who wish to provide drug samples to patients. A further development would be to provide for automated dispensing of prescription medication sold in retail locations. One such dispensing device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,892,941 to Rosenblum, which relies on networked telecommunication between the doctor's office, an insurance company, and a retail pharmacy.
Current vending and e-commerce technology, however, fails to address many of the security and privacy concerns associated with automated medication dispensing, as well as some matters of practical convenience to the patient and to health care providers. In particular, an automated medication dispensing system should be capable of authenticating a prescription's validity, ensuring the security and privacy of prescription information, and insuring that prescription information has not been tampered with. It is also desirable that only licensed, authorized dispensing machines be allowed to dispense prescription medications. It is further desired that these goals be accomplished without the necessity of creating a centralized database of medical records, which is burdensome to provide as a practical matter and undesirable to the health care community because of privacy concerns.
What is needed, therefore, is a decentralized system for secure automated dispensing of prescription medications. The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems, and offers other advantages over previous solutions.